Helios Hyperion
by Antenna
Summary: A connected series of stories set in a post Chosen AU, at the Hyperion Hotel. Giles x Buffy.
1. Sunnydale Dust

Buffy stood with her toes overhanging the edge of the Hyperion Hotel pool. She carefully balanced herself, and closed her eyes against the brassy Los Angeles sun. The sun felt good on her face, but it was almost the only thing that did. She wrapped an arm around her side where it hurt. The stab wound in her side was healing, but it was still agonizing, especially when she moved. Or breathed. Or stood still.

Someone came into the courtyard. Buffy listened to the footsteps. Xander. He came up beside her.

"I wouldn't suggest diving. Maybe a cannonball into that wouldn't kill you. But yuck."

Buffy sighed and blinked her eyes open. The pool was about a third full of green and scummy water. Stagnant. It probably bred mosquitos. The whole courtyard was dusty and dirty, trash blown in the corners, as if Angel and his friends never went there at all.

"Wish I could swim, though," she said.

"Huh."

Xander moved off to a little building at the side of the courtyard. He tried the door, and it scraped open. He disappeared into the darkness, and Buffy heard some clanking sounds. The battle had claimed Anya less than a day ago, and Xander hadn't said a thing about it since he'd found out. Not word one.

Xander came back with a battered metal toolbox. Its green paint had been chipped away. He carried it over to the end of the pool where the filter motor sat, hidden under a lumpy cover. He opened the box to reveal an assortment of tools, in good condition aside from the grime.

"Let's see what we can do with this filter thing," Xander said.

He knelt and started prodding. Buffy closed her eyes again and soaked in the sun. Giles had said something once, about sun and Slayers and recharging. He'd approved of her tans.

Quiet voices talking, at the edge of the courtyard. The man himself. The second voice she recognized by accent.

"--was so sorry to hear. Is there a memorial planned?"

Wesley. Somewhere on the other side of the courtyard. Buffy squeezed her eyes tighter shut.

"We were in no shape to do anything at the time. Things are no better now." Giles made a rueful noise.

Giles and Wesley were about twenty feet away, at the end of the pool near where Xander and the filter assembly were.

"Stay here as long as you need to. The Hyperion has the space."

"This haven of my rest, this cradle of my glory, this soft clime, this calm luxuriance of blissful light." Giles's voice sounded as if he were reciting.

Wesley laughed. "Apt."

Buffy stayed still, and hoped they'd go away. But the footsteps and voices moved closer.

"Hello, Buffy. I was wondering if I might--"

"I was just going in," Buffy said, abruptly. She didn't turn.

"Right. Shan't trouble you."

Giles was still for a moment, then he left, moving fast. Buffy listened to his footsteps. Xander dropped his wrench. The clank on the concrete was loud. Buffy opened her eyes in time to see Xander pick it up again and resume his work on the bolts holding the maintenance hatch in place. She should offer to loosen them for him. But she hurt.

Wesley came closer, and showed no signs of leaving. "What was that about?"

"Huh?"

"That sort of treatment was once reserved for me."

"Things are different now."

"No apocalypse in progress, so his services aren't needed?"

"Services weren't needed for the last one, either. Giles isn't my Watcher. Anybody's Watcher. He's just another guy. None of us are special any more."

Wesley tilted his head, and smiled mirthlessly. "I see."

"Spike said... Spike said I'd surpassed him. And he was making mistakes, so I was right to--" Buffy broke off.

"Ah. Spike. One always takes vampire-slaying advice from a vampire," Wesley said. Despite his clothes and the roughness of his voice, his tone yanked her right back to when she'd first known him, in that little library. Starchy, prim, disapproving. "Very well. I have some Sumerian that needs translating. I had been about to ask Rupert to help me with it, but as he is outmoded, and you have surpassed him, I shall ask you instead. The tablet is in my office, if you'd care to favor me with your reading."

Buffy glared at him.

"No? Whatever is the matter?"

"That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean, then?" Wesley's voice was soft, but Buffy was not comforted. That voice was also dangerous.

Buffy missed whatever Wesley said next, but it must have been dismissive, because he stalked off. Xander watched Wesley leave in the same direction Giles had gone. Buffy watched Xander. He turned his head. Buffy saw the patch on his eye, over a still reddened cheekbone, and felt that stab of guilt again. She'd seen him putting medication onto the place where his eye had been, yesterday on the bus. Xander met her glance for an instant, then looked down and fiddled with the spacing of his monkey wrench.

"Did Spike really say that?"

Buffy shrugged, then winced. Her side was killing her, still. That wound was deep. Spike hadn't been the only one to say it. The First had also been saying things to her about Giles. And about everybody, but some topics hurt more than others.

"Among other things."

"Huh," said Xander. He wasn't looking at her, but was instead peering at the head of his monkey wrench. He twiddled the knob, then gave the wrench a pull. The bolt came free. He levered the plate aside and stared into the filter assembly. "Doesn't look so bad. But I think I have to drain the pool first."

"Get the Potentials to do it," Buffy said. They were in better shape than she was. The ones who'd lived, that was. Which nearly hadn't included her.

"Naw. The point of getting the filter working is to use the pump to drain it. Besides, I heard there was a Turok Han problem. The girls are gonna be busy."

"Good for them," Buffy said, but her next thought was to wonder why nobody had told her.

Xander reached into the motor with a huge flat-bladed screwdriver and flicked gunk out. "Yeah, can't blame you. There are lots of Slayers now. Time to let somebody else do it."

For a second, Buffy wanted it. "Maybe. Would be nice to be asked."

"I think that was what Giles had been about to say to you. Hey, Buff. Free advice, worth what you pay for it. About Spike and Giles. I think the leopard is always spotty. That's what I think."

Buffy considered this. "You never liked him, did you." She didn't bother to specify which one, because she knew what Xander felt about Giles. But it was a true thing to say about both of them. And, for that matter, about the First.

Xander didn't answer. He tilted his head and looked at her with one clear brown eye. Then he walked over to the dusty maintenance shed and pulled out a heavy coil of dark green hose. He carried it back to the edge of the pool and dipped one end into the water. Buffy watched it extend out into the deepest part of the pool. Stagnant green water. Algae and mildew.

"What are the chances this doesn't have any holes in it, ya think? Another item for the Home Depot list."

Buffy watched him patiently uncoiling the hose. "Why are you doing this?"

"You said you wanted to go swimming." Xander sounded puzzled.

"No, I mean-- Never mind. Where's Willow?"

Xander dragged the free end of the hose over to the filter. "Look for that Texan chick. Fred. They were bonding over Powerbooks when I saw 'em last."

"Yeah, sounds right. And Xan? Thanks."

Xander nodded, and picked up his wrench again.

* * *

Willow was in a computer lab, sort of: one of the hotel suites, taken over by ethernet cables and industrial power strips and the white noise of a hundred tiny fans spinning. There was a big rack full of of pizza-box-sized computers with the word "Sun" on them, with sticky printed labels that Buffy found mysterious. The other was lined with bookshelves. Science books, mostly. Chemistry, physics, mathematics. Quantum mechanics. Homotopy theory. All Greek to Buffy. Or Sumerian. Wesley's comment had hit her where it hurt. Buffy trailed a finger along the spines as she made her way over to the desk where Willow was. 

She sat with her feet on the pan of the chair and a Powerbook resting on her knees. "I read you loud and clear, Fred. Just got the Google home page on my browser."

"Peachy!" Fred's voice came from the other side of the room, underneath a table. Buffy could see bare legs and a bright flower-print dress, but no more of Fred.

Willow looked up and spotted Buffy. She pointed to the ceiling and twirled her finger. "Airport. Latest thing."

"Neat! I think. Like, helicopters on the roof?"

Willow grinned, a big relaxed happy thing. "Different kinda airport. Wireless network. Eight oh two eleven. We're getting everybody linked up."

"I'll nod like I understood you, and you'll pretend I did, and then we'll move along to my question."

"Fire away!"

"About the First. I wanna talk about the stuff it said."

Willow's face changed. She closed the laptop and set it aside. "Woah, Buffy. You go right for the hard stuff."

Fred appeared from under the table with a bright orange cable in hand. "Need a crossover. I'll go fetch one and let y'all talk."

Buffy watched her bounce out. Fred was, in Buffy's expert opinion, flat-out gorgeous, and that dress was adorable. She saw that Willow was also watching, with a glint in her eye, and she wondered where Kennedy was. Another item on the list of questions to ask later. Over a pair of extra-large margaritas, maybe.

"I was wondering what it said to you. Because you didn't talk about it."

"Unfun. Turns out I've known a lot of people who are now dead. Some of them are pissed off."

Willow shrugged. "According to the First."

Buffy plunked herself onto the floor in front of Willow's chair, then had to cover up a wince. Sudden movements still contraindicated. Slayer healing was taking its own sweet time fixing this one. "What was it like for you?" she said.

Willow wrapped her arms around her knees.

"Xander and I had a long talk about it. Jessie showed up to both of us, and it was-- And then it used Tara's form, and I nearly went to pieces. The First said a lot of stuff. Remember when Spike said that stuff to us to get us four to break up so we couldn't fight Adam? It was just like that. Only nastier. More personal. Because the First knew secrets."

Buffy nodded. It sure had. Big secrets. All the secrets. "Anything a dead person knew."

"Yeah. All our weak spots. All our insecurities."

Willow stared at her feet. Buffy did too. She was wearing mismatched sneakers with holes in the toes. The sneakers had red-brown dust ground into the white laces: Sunnydale dust. After a while, she went on. "Xander and I decided to ignore anything it said. We reminded each other of how much we'd come through together. Yellow crayons, you know. Not destroying the world because Xander loved me. Stuff like that. Made the First seem kinda petty."

"Oh." Buffy now felt about six kinds of stupid. It was like Xander had said, only this time she hadn't been the one to clue in first. Looked like she was last.

"What did it say to you?"

Buffy shrugged. As Willow had said, it was all stuff that couldn't, shouldn't be talked about. Private things. Even though Willow was her best friend, it was too much. Too intimate. Too much like the things she said to herself at three in the morning when she couldn't sleep. "Stuff. Mostly I've been thinking about the damage it did, to friendships and stuff."

"Like when we threw you out of your own house."

Buffy went very still.

"Did you ever talk to anybody about what it said? Like, talk to Giles? 'Cause I think you got it worst. You were the one it was trying to split off from us."

"No."

Giles might have figured out what Willow and Xander had, about the overt attack. Though he might not. The attack on Spike might have been the result of the First working its mojo. Just as Spike's problem with Giles was the same. Buffy's new question was: How long? How else? How long had it been manipulating them? Its rise was tied to her resurrection, so that meant it might have been in action the whole time since.

The whole time. Buffy thought about that. Breakups. Separation. Suspicion. Willow and Tara. Xander and Anya. Buffy and Spike. Buffy and Dawn. Buffy and her Watcher. Buffy and the world.

"You probably should now."

"Yeah, okay, I think I will. Hey, Will. Dinner, you, me, Mexican."

Willow flashed a sly grin. "Got a plan tonight."

Buffy leveled a finger at her. "Soon. And you're going to tell me all."

* * *

Now the hard one. The most damage to repair; the trickiest person to talk to even at the best of times. And, apparently, Mr Absent Man. He wasn't in his room. He wasn't in Wesley's suite. He wasn't in the library. Angel hadn't seen him. 

In desperation, Buffy went to Harmony at the front desk. Harmony the vampire, chewing gum, painting her nails, and reading Cosmo, safely in the dim light of the lobby.

"Harmony. Harmony!"

She pulled a pair of white buds from her ears. Buffy caught a few seconds of tinny Britney Spears before Harmony found the pause button. "What do you want?" she said. The stupidity shone out from a point between Harmony's eyes.

"Do you know where Giles is?"

"Yeah, he and Wesley went out together about half an hour ago. They were totally rude to me when I asked them if they could please not make long-distance calls from their rooms on the hotel's account, because I don't care what Angel said, I have to--"

"Harmony. Shut up. Could you call Wesley's cell and tell him I need to talk to Giles? Tell him it's important. It's about the Sumerian thing. I'll be in my room."

Harmony looked annoyed, but turned to punch at the phone behind the counter. Buffy didn't wait to listen to Harmony's half of the conversation. She stabbed the elevator button and waited. Normally she'd just book up the steps, but it would be too much strain on her side. The blade had gone in deeper than she'd thought. She rode up the elevator and tried not to worry too much about the strange wiggles it made as it moved. There was an inspection card from 1984 over the button panel. Maybe Xander could find a manual.

She rode the wiggly elevator all the way up. Her room was on the top floor of the Hyperion. She'd picked a north-facing window, so she could look out to where Sunnydale used to be. Not that she could see anything: the haze brought the horizon in close. The blue-white sky was infinitely far away. She leaned on the windowsill looking out, thinking.

Two big things had changed. First, the Hellmouth was gone. No locus of vampire activity existed now, as far as she knew. Second, she wasn't the only Slayer any more. She wasn't even one of two. She was one of twelve. Maybe more. That meant she wasn't special any more, except that she was. She could be in charge if she wanted. She could kick off and go drinking in Cabo for a couple of years if she wanted.

Screw that.

Apocalypses, Buffy decided, were easier than the peaces between them. When the world was going to end, you had a certain purity of focus. Priorities were obvious. Stopping the apocalypse was important. Everything else was not. Take that focus away, and what you had was the usual mess of life.

She thought maybe that brown haze, way out on the horizon, was the dust of Sunnydale. Sunnydale: not as important as stopping the Turok Han. Focus. Purity. So what about Sunnydale? Dust. Brush it off, move on.

So what about Spike? Dust. Not in the way she'd always expected, either. He'd died a hero, and she knew better than anybody what that meant. Heroism like that was rewarded. She'd miss him, but she didn't want him back, not when she knew what he'd have to give up to return. Godspeed, Spike.

Buffy's new task was with the living. Twelve Slayers, three friends, one sister, and a world full of demons to fight. Now she had the mess. Now she had to figure out how to handle people. What to do with twelve Slayers who'd lost their families and their Watchers. A friend who'd lost his one-time fiancee and the town he'd lived in his entire life. A sister who'd lost her stable home. A friend who'd lost-- what had Giles lost? Buffy didn't know.

There was what Wesley had been saying about a memorial. Twice denso-girl in one day, that was Buffy. The Council had been blown up. Watchers had been murdered by Bringers, as well as potential Slayers. That meant Giles had lost friends. Colleagues. Maybe more than any of the rest of them.

She waited for the knock at her door, and planned what she would do when she heard it.

* * *

The sky began to glow with the colors of sunset, and she was still waiting and thinking. A spectacular sunset, red and raging. The dust of Sunnydale in the air, Buffy supposed. But at last the knock, and item one on the messy important list of life post-apocalypse. 

"It's open," she said.

She turned and leaned back against the window. Giles came in and shut the door behind himself. He had his leather duffle bag in his hand, the big battered thing he'd been living out of for the last few months. Over his shoulder he had a new-looking messenger bag. He was wearing his leather jacket, a strange thing to wear on a warm spring evening. He was packed. He was leaving. Buffy opened her mouth to complain, then closed it. She knew why Giles might be taking off without saying anything to her.

Giles bent to set his bags by the door. He straightened, took a step further into the room, shoved his hands deep into his jacket pockets. He wasn't smiling. He looked wary.

"Buffy, what is it? Wesley said the oddest--"

She pointed to the dusty couch. "Sit. We need to talk."

Giles looked as if he were going to speak, but didn't. He took off his jacket and folded it. He draped it over the back of the couch, then sat. He sneezed. The inevitable handkerchief came out of his jeans pocket. Buffy went over to him, and tossed all her plans aside, and went with what her Slayer instincts told her. She climbed onto him. She sat astride his lap, facing him, hands resting on his shoulders. Alarm flashed across his face, and he said again, "Buffy, what--"

Again she interrupted him, with a finger against his lips.

"When did we do this last?"

Giles shook his head. "Two years. More. You--"

He shook his head again and fell silent. Buffy knew what he meant. Infinities of meaning, in one head-shake. Their last intimate talk had been the last time it happened between them. After that had been two years of disconnection, so complete that he'd feared her when she'd climbed onto his lap.

She slipped his glasses off, gently, and set them aside. Giles blinked. He looked vulnerable without them. Buffy stroked his temples. The worried look slowly faded. He sighed, and his shoulders relaxed at last.

Buffy kissed his forehead. "Missed this."

Softly, "As did I."

"Tough year."

"Mmm."

"I screwed up. A lot."

"No more than I did. But you came through in the end. As always."

Giles smiled up at her, and Buffy's heart turned over. That was the smile she'd been missing all this time. She leaned forward and kissed the end of his nose. He shifted and slipped his arms around her. Buffy rested her chin on his shoulder and let him hold her close. She breathed in Giles-scent, that old-fashioned clean smell of his cologne. The hand caressing her face smelled faintly of india ink. She remembered the first time she'd been aware of his scent, that cologne. He'd been teaching her how to throw a knife, and had stood close behind her to guide her through the correct arm motion. She'd held still for a second and sniffed. He'd been alien to her and familiar at the same time.

Familiar. Safe. Hers. Every Slayer needs a Watcher. Every general needs an adjutant. Every queen needs a vizier. Giles was warm underneath her now. The hand bracing her back was solid. Buffy nuzzled his ear.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"What on earth for?"

She gave him a look. The man was moving out without saying anything, and he asked her what she was sorry for. There were a lot of things she could apologize for, but Buffy started with the most important.

"For all the people who died. When the First blew up the Council." Giles tensed again beneath her, but said nothing. "How many friends did you lose?"

Giles sighed, and tightened his arms around her. "I never counted. An uncle, my oldest nephew, several cousins, more schoolmates than I care to think."

"You never said anything."

"There was no point. It would have distracted you from what you needed to do."

Buffy gripped his sweater and shook him, gently. "No. Wrong. There was a point. You were grieving. I should have been your friend instead of the Slayer machine. We turned into these, I don't know, robots. Marching around making self-righteous speeches. Not talking to each other. Scheming against each other. How the hell did I not hug you for all that time? What was _wrong_ with me?"

Giles shook his head again. "You were distracted--"

"No. Remember what I said the first time? About not screwing up by ignoring you again? Well, that's exactly what I did. And I finally figured out why. Took me this long, but now I know. It was the First. Working on us. All along. Driving us apart."

His eyebrows went up. "From the start? I mean, from the moment you, you returned?"

"Yeah. That's when Willow gave it a foothold."

"My goodness. It fits. I wonder how. The spectral visits were obvious manipulation, but it must have--"

"Giles. It's over. And I know how to fix it. No more apartness."

Buffy pressed herself against his chest for a second, then bent her face down to kiss him. He returned the kiss gently, chastely. Buffy stroked the back of his head. Then she kissed him again, and made it blatant, like she had the first time she'd reclaimed him. He stopped her with fingers laid across her lips.

"Buffy, I must ask. What does this mean? What do you intend? I don't know if I-- the last time, it was marvelous, but I-- It was hard to bear not knowing if it would happen again."

His face was strained and vulnerable again. Buffy was serene, though. She knew the answer to this one.

"I'm serious. This time. Serious about everything. No more excuses. I have a life to put back together, and I want you in it. I have a bunch of Slayers to lead, and I want you helping. I want you. Got it?"

Giles drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Dear Buffy. I do love you so. You know that, don't you?"

"I know. Silly guy. Known all along. But I didn't know you had an uncle. And now you're going to tell me all about him. What his name was. What he was like. And about your nephew. And if you need to cry, you're going to cry."

"No," Giles said.

Buffy's heart almost stopped. "No? What--"

"First I'm going to patch up the injury in your side that's making you wince and move oddly. And then we'll talk, and I'll tell you everything you want to know. And then--"

Buffy's breath caught.

"There's a Turok Han loose in Los Angeles."

She smacked Giles on the shoulder. "I know just the chick for the job."


	2. Sorrows End

The Slayer and the Watcher sit on a dusty couch in a dilapidated hotel room in downtown Los Angeles. They are granted the definite article out of respect for their seniority in their roles. Twelve other girls with Slayer powers are in the Hyperion with them, and at least three other people who might lay claim to the title of Watcher. But they are, to themselves and to their friends, _the_ Slayer and _the_ Watcher. They sit on the couch, the Slayer in the Watcher's lap, kissing each other much as they did in their first intimate encounter, three years before. That is to say, tenderly, tentatively, as if they are each afraid they might frighten the other away. The Watcher ends the caress, and lays his hand over the place where his Slayer has been injured. She hid it from her other friends, but she cannot hide it from him.

* * *

There was no chance that Buffy would be hunting Turok Han that night. Not after she stripped off her shirt for Giles and showed him what was making her wince. He gasped, and pushed her down onto her bed. She blushed, mistaking his reaction-- it was the first time she'd been naked in front him in more than two years. But his gaze was on her side, and he bent over her without seeming to see anything but the wound. He pulled the soaked bandage away. Buffy recoiled at the sight of blood; she hadn't realized it was oozing. He touched her side gently. Something deep inside throbbed.

Giles made a grumpy sound. "You ought to have come to me sooner. On the bus. What's wrong with your healing?" That last he muttered almost to himself.

What _was_ wrong with her Slayer healing, anyway? Buffy let awareness of the pain slip past her barriers. Ouch. It wasn't getting better. If anything, it was worse than it had been that morning, when she'd been sun-soaking. What was up? Buffy concentrated. Honed. Tried to feel her way in. There was something funky going on. Breathe, the way he'd taught her so long ago, and find her center. Move in, and down. Down to where her Watcher's fingers were on her side, touching her somewhere in the spirit realm as well as in physical reality. Where her wound was. Where there was a splinter of evil, deep inside.

Buffy opened her eyes and surfaced. She prodded at her side, now heedless of the pain.

Giles straightened up. "Hospital. I'll arrange transport."

"No! No. It's not-- There's something evil in there. Seriously. I need you or Willow. Mystical stuff, Giles."

Giles shook his head, and pulled his phone from his pocket. Giles with a cellphone: Buffy's world was indeed changing.

"Xander? Giles here. Do we have a first aid kit? A serious kit, none of those-- Good. Can you have her bring it up to Buffy's room? Now, if not sooner. Ta."

Giles snapped his phone closed. He cocked an eyebrow at her. "I'll try to patch this up, but-- Are you sure you won't go to hospital?"

"Certain. There's bad mojo they can't fix. Something's messing with me."

Buffy tried to stand up, but Giles put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her flat on the bed. He glared at her, and Buffy gave up. He was in full Watcher mode, and to be honest she was glad he was. There were things she could delegate now, and one of them was getting this fixed. He could handle the mojo situation.

Somebody knocked at the door. Giles went over to answer it. Buffy heard Xander's voice, in quiet conversation with Giles. She pushed herself up enough to meet his eye and wave at him. Then the door was closing again, and Xander was off. Another fix-it errand accomplished. She wondered how much progress he'd made on the swimming pool.

"Where Xander got this, I don't know, but it's military issue."

Giles arranged a towel under her on the bed, and got the kit open. He went into the bathroom, and came out with wet hands. He rubbed them with something from the kit. Buffy smelled alcohol, something astringent and medical. The smell of the patch-up after a late-night patrol. It almost made her feel nostalgic. Then he was putting on a pair of latex gloves, and taking something metal out of its packaging. He looked grim.

"Buffy, I don't have any anesthetic. Are you certain you want me to do this?"

"Stop asking. Just do it."

Giles laid his hands on her side and did something. Buffy looked away and concentrated on not making any noise. It was wussy to make noise, unless you were exaggerating it to make the people around you laugh.

"Healing at the edges," Giles said. "As if it's closing around something."

"Can you see it?"

"Nothing there."

"Holy water. And go deep."

"Ah. Brilliant." The bed shifted, and he was off digging through his leather satchel. He came back with a little bottle and a stake. He handed her the stake and pointed to his mouth. Buffy made a little noise, a pointless protesting whimper, but put the stake in her mouth crosswise.

Giles unscrewed the cap from the bottle of holy water. "I'll be as quick as I can."

There was apology in his voice, but he didn't hesitate. When the holy water touched her, it fizzed. Buffy bit down on the stake and concentrated on not making any noise. She did a visualization thing Giles had taught her once: she walked through her childhood home, counting doorknobs. Screen door, front door proper, hallway closet door, bedroom door--

"Found it. Breathe for me, Buffy. Breathe in, and let it out slowly. Again. One more time, deep as you can."

The moment she let breath escape, he did something to her side. The stake creaked in her mouth. Buffy tried not to bite so hard, but this was as bad as it ever got. Then it stopped. Giles held up a tiny sliver of metal, dark with her blood. He set it on a wad of red-stained gauze on the nightstand. He then swabbed at her side with something wet, but it already felt better. The pain had begun to ebb the second he got the metal out. She opened her mouth and let the wet stake fall out, then spit out a few splinters of wood. Yuck.

Giles made a soothing noise, and continued whatever he was doing to her side. He murmured to her as he worked. "Cleaning it up. A little antibiotic. Just enough to keep things clear for the Slayer power to do its work. Nearly done. Butterflies now. Should give you stitches, but we'll skate by this time. There."

He taped gauze over it, then wadded up a bunch of red-stained stuff to throw away. Buffy could recall a time when the sight of her own blood had made her queasy. A million years ago, before she'd learned skills like how to staple herself back together. How to pop her own joints back into their sockets. How to sit still while Giles stitched her up without anesthetic. Her hands were shaking, though, probably from the aftereffects of the pain. She could taste it in her mouth, and her face was wet with sweat.

Giles picked up the metal fragment again and wiped the gore from it. He turned it over in his bare fingers, studying it. "This is cursed?"

"Big time. Can't you feel it?"

"You've always been more sensitive than I. Let's see."

Giles wet his fingers in the holy water and made the sign of the cross on the sword fragment. He chanted something in Latin. Buffy recognized the words of a counter-curse she'd heard before. Energy flowed, the fragment flared white, and just like that it was a hunk of metal, no power left in it to hurt her.

"They must have cursed their swords to do extra damage to Slayers. The Turok Han out there now will have something like this--"

Buffy sat up, but Giles once again put a hand on her shoulder. To the surprise of both of them, he was able to push her flat again. Buffy sighed, and surrendered to the inevitable.

"You'll tell 'em?"

"I will. Rest." It was a command, though a soft one. He followed it by layering blankets over her. Buffy vaguely remembered something about shock. The adrenaline was fading now, and she felt strange in the pit of her stomach.

Giles got off the bed. Buffy watched him close up the first aid kit and dispose of the old bandages. He went into the bathroom and ran water. Buffy zoned. Her body had changed modes, to deep healing mode. For a while there she'd almost been able to make it shift on cue, and defer the healing if she had to fight for a while. She couldn't stave this off, though. She blinked herself awake again, with difficulty. Hibernation mode, healing mode was calling her. The needs of her body agreed with the command from her Watcher, something the Slayer inside knew was a good idea.

The sound of the door opening startled Buffy up from her doze. Giles was sliding his messenger bag over his shoulder. Buffy pushed herself up onto an elbow, awake now and freaked.

"Don't leave! We're not finished. Giles. I'm sorry. Whatever I did. I mean--"

"Buffy. Buffy. Please. I'm not going anywhere. I merely need to... inform Wesley of my change of plans."

But he closed the door and set his messenger bag down next to the couch. Buffy slouched back, but kept watching him uneasily. He pulled out his phone. He dialed and talked for some time with someone, quietly enough that Buffy couldn't hear what he said. She could hear from his voice, the way it rose and fell, the little laugh, that he was okay. She'd fixed things between them enough for now. Emergency repairs complete.

She woke again from a half-sleep when the bed tipped under his weight. He was readjusting the blanket at her neck. He rested a hand on her forehead for a moment.

"Sorry I panicked," Buffy said to him, muzzily.

"No, I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to alarm you."

"Giles? Were you leaving? When I called you here, I mean."

He looked away from her, then at the floor. "I had... I'd intended to take the next available flight to England."

"What's your plan now?"

Buffy was braced to hear he still wanted to leave. But he shrugged. "I have no plan. I've canceled my flight. I'll stay with you. Follow you wherever you want to go. Do whatever it is you'd like to do."

"Mmm. Good plan. Always listen to Buffy."

Giles laughed softly, so that she felt it more than heard it. He stroked her forehead again. "Just tell me what you want done."

"Simple. I need a grand vizier."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Need a grand vizier. Want the job?"

"Buffy, what--"

She tugged the blanket up higher. "Wait. Aren't viziers evil? No, I got it. Only if they have goatees. You planning on growing a beard?"

Giles opened his mouth, shut it again, then just stared at her. "I think I'm safe on that score. Go to sleep, Buffy."

"Not without you."

He shrugged, and bent to unlace his shoes. Off came his jeans, then his shirt. Then he rearranged the bed somewhat, and stole half of her pillows. When he was finally settled in, she said, "But do you want the job?"

"Yes, I'll take the job. I suspect I know what you're angling for. Hush. I'm right here. I'm holding you."

He snugged himself up beside her and made his words true. This was new. She hadn't let herself sleep with him before, in the conking out sense of the word. They'd only been in a bed a couple of times, and both times she'd waited until he'd started snoring then taken off. This time she was too tired even to think about it. Too sore. It felt too good to feel his arms around her. Stupid to distrust him. Stupid to distrust Xander. Her own sister. The First had played her. Buffy didn't like being played. She drifted off, feeling safe for the first time in two years.

* * *

Buffy dreams. They are a Slayer's dreams: vampires and demons, running and fighting, blood and dust, equal parts terror and thrill. She dreams this way every night, and has since the night the Powers touched her to make her Theirs. She sighs in her sleep, safe and content, and allows herself to move into deeper sleep. The dreamless sleep of healing. When she surfaces to REM sleep once more, the dreams shift, become more real. Scent and sound and sight: she is in a cold pine forest, far away, watching men with hammers chain a wolf to the ground. Their breath billows white in the night air. Their hammers are loud on the chain links. Buffy knows she is dreaming true. The Powers are sending her a message. She wishes They'd use Western Union like everyone else.

* * *

Buffy woke to the mattress shifting as somebody climbed in next to her. Giles. The sound of water running in the bathroom told her where he'd been. The room was dark, and so was the sky outside the window. Slayer time-sense said it was past midnight.

"Hey," she said.

Giles slid close beside her. "You slept well."

"Did you nap?"

He grunted. "A little."

"What did you do?"

He shrugged against her. "Thought. Held you. You dreamed, I think?"

Buffy snuggled herself against Giles's side. "Yeah. Prophetic, even. A wolf. Big honking wolf, with green eyes that glowed. She let herself be chained up by a bunch of men, but she kept breaking out of them."

"Fenris," Giles said. His breath was warm against her cheek. "Norse mythology. He allowed himself to be chained, but will eventually break free. He will, according to prophecy, devour Odin at Ragnaršk."

"Hello, apocalypse. Except that my wolf was a girl."

"Interesting. That would seem to eliminate Fenris, who was most definitely male in the myth. Father to the sun-chaser Skoll. Roman myth, perhaps?"

"Fits otherwise. Really huge, like moon-eating huge. And breaks free. I kinda think she did eat the moon. Not sure."

Giles made an uncertain noise. "Has this been recurring?"

"First time just now. I didn't get a big creepy thing from it. No urgent danger."

"You'll tell me if it recurs."

"'Course."

Buffy stretched. Her side tweaked her a little, but not seriously. She touched the bandage; it was dry on the outside. Slayer healing had done a big chunk of the work already. The sheets were cool against her feet. She was wearing her panties, and nothing else. Giles was in t-shirt and boxers. His legs were warm against hers, a little fuzzy. She turned to face him, laid her hands on his chest. His heart beat under her hands. She could hear it, if she let herself listen. His chest rose and fell with breath. He was nice. Comfy. Human. And dangerous and complicated and problematic. They had unfinished business, and he had to know it just as much as she did.

"Giles, what did the First say to you?"

Giles went very still next to her. His pulse hammered faster under her hands. "A great deal," he said, at last.

"I am thinking it was probably pretty bad. It was bad for me, too, you know? I fell for it. There were a lot of times when I wanted to go talk to you, clear things up, maybe even do this again. But it always showed up and said stuff."

Giles twitched at that, but said nothing. Buffy let it sit between them. She wasn't sure she was ready for this conversation yet. This conversation was going to have to cover Spike, before it went very far, and that was going to be painful. It was the kind of conversation that maybe you could only have in the dark, where you couldn't really see the other person. Then Giles started talking, almost muttering under his breath.

"Tara knew. That we had-- I'm not sure how she knew, but she did. She said something to me once, before I left Sunnydale. And so the First... Well. It supplied explanations for why you didn't, ah, resume the relationship. After you came back." Giles trailed off. He cleared his throat. "Apparently I was a fool. Again. Easily played. I've always had difficulty with thinking you don't need me. Insecurity, I suppose."

He laughed, but there was a nervous edge to it. He reached up and clasped her hand in his and held it tight against his chest.

"Buffy, I am truly sorry. My behavior, I. Lord."

"Look, don't. It's over."

"I can offer excuses. But I ought to have been on guard."

"Giles, our lives were insane. Yours especially. Flying all over the world, stressed out of your mind."

He squeezed her hand. "Jet-lagged beyond belief, living out of a suitcase, either fleeing with a traumatized girl or trying to forget the sight of my latest failure."

"Vulnerable." More than she'd been, really. She'd been safe in her house in Sunnydale the whole time.

Giles made a sound, possibly in agreement.

"Grieving? For the uncle you're going to tell me about?"

Giles let go of her and rolled away to face the ceiling. He rested his arm across his face, so Buffy couldn't see him. "Yes. No. It's complicated. There wasn't time. There was a war on. Pull up one's socks and get on with it. One's perspective changes, in wartime. My grandmother tried to tell me about it, once, about what it had been like for them all during the war. No time to mourn. No permission to mourn. The sacrifices are supposed to be necessary. A bubble of unreality. Now I know. Now I understand what she'd been trying to say."

Buffy turned that one over. She'd been living that one almost every day from the moment she learned Glory was a hellgod. It hadn't let up. And now the war was over. Two years, more, and over now. Anya dead. Spike-- Spike dead, his soul at last released. And Buffy knew where he was, where Anya had to be too. Heroes don't go to hell.

"You stop to mourn afterwards. That's what Memorial Day is, I guess."

"We call it Remembrance Day. And wear a poppy. Flanders field, mud and poppies and the bodies of the dead. So many girls, Buffy. So many dead. Just twelve left. The twelve in this hotel with us. All the rest, gone. And their Watchers."

He was crying now, at last, softly. It was easier for her, maybe, than for Giles, because she knew where they all were and what it felt like. She'd miss them all, but she'd see them again. She was in no hurry, but it was there, waiting, the reward. Near-impossible to explain this to Giles or anybody. She'd tried once, with Willow, but Willow had wedged it into the frame of her magic and power, had thought she was talking about dimensions and places where the living were.

Giles rolled out of bed and moved to the chair where he'd laid his trousers. Buffy watched him dig in the pocket and extract a handkerchief, the ever-present Giles hankie, and wipe his face. Then he got back into bed. Moment of grief over, at least for now, but the repression filter seemed to be off. Off for good, she hoped, though Giles was never going to be Mister Heart On His Sleeve. It was time, though, to hold him tight. Instinct said it.

Giles had once had a fit when she'd used the word "instinct" to describe her hunches, the things the Slayer deep inside told her, but she had no other word for it. Maybe, if she explained it to Giles, he could tell her what it was. Research it, explain its mysteries. That was a topic for the morning, for the day, for the time of cold rationality. Night was a time for following hunches, and Buffy's hunch said that she should act now. Make Giles hers again now. The grievances were past, and it was time for sorrows to end.

She slid her hands under his t-shirt, and pushed it up. He obediently rose enough to tug it over his head and toss it aside. He lay back onto the pillows and allowed Buffy to touch him.

He was more battered than he'd been the last time she'd seen him naked. The worst mark was a big round scar on his stomach. The spear, she remembered, wielded by the knights of Byzantium. Bad times, bad times. His face was lined more deeply than it had been, too, both the smile lines around his eyes and the worry lines in his forehead. He had more gray in his hair. But he was still Giles, still the man she'd known for seven years now. He smelled good. He smelled restful, if that was even possible.

He rested a hand over her side, on the bandage. Buffy could feel him there again, a presence in more than just physical space with her. It was eerie and comforting at once. "How are you feeling? Are you up to this?"

"Giles. It's been hours. I'm not a hundred percent yet, but I will be in the morning."

"I forget. I've lived with the miracle that is you for seven years, and it still astonishes me."

"Sweet talker."

"But are you sure--"

"Yup, I'm sure. Kiss me."

Buffy didn't wait for him to follow orders, since orders were generally not something either one of them bothered following. She kissed him. He slid his hand down and around to her back, and pulled her tight against him.

Giles was such a contradictory partner in bed. He obviously knew what he was doing, and had done far more in his life than Buffy had in hers. He'd had lots of partners, and some of them had been other men. But he was always so shy with her, so cautious. He never made the first move, not ever. He waited for her to make it obvious that she wanted to make love, and only then did he touch her body. He'd been excited from the first touch of her hands on his bare chest, his body hard against hers, but he stayed a perfect gentleman. Though there'd been that one time, the last time. Buffy'd coaxed him into letting that mask slip, and what had come out of his mouth had been startlingly filthy.

Buffy shied away from that memory. Too close to some other memories she resolutely avoided visiting. Bad times, redux. Better memories were of the first time she'd kissed Giles, the first time she'd tasted his mouth, licked tears from his face. He wasn't crying this time, the big softie, but instead he seemed quietly happy. He made a little sound as he slid in, a soft thing that sounded more like satisfaction than desire.

He took his time, and Buffy let him. He held her close and moved against her slowly. He was quiet, as he usually was, controlled even when she could tell he was in the throes, even when his breath started coming fast, when he started making little gasps. Buffy nudged him over onto his back and sat astride him, so she could see him. He slipped his hand between them and touched her, held his thumb against her. And then she was there, and he followed her.

Giles didn't move, didn't make any attempt to let go or clean up or change position. He just said, "Oh, Buffy, don't leave me this time," and then closed his eyes. Just like a man, like all of them, to fall asleep afterward.

Buffy watched her Watcher sleep, and started making plans. Dangerous, complicated, contradictory, hers. Giles would be all right. Now for the rest of it. Twelve Slayers. One hotel. One long summer stretching out before them. What to do? Kill the last Turok Han, and then what? She closed her eyes, just for a moment, and this time, if she dreamed, she didn't remember it.

* * *

In the city to the south of them, a vampire hunts. It does not look like a vampire as we have come to know them. It has no friendly human face to present to its victims, no memories of the human soul it has displaced to aid it in luring the unwary into thinking it harmless. Or attractive. It looks like what is it: a predator. It cannot hunt, then, with guile. It has other gifts to use. Speed. Strength. Focus. This vampire will never be weakened by attacks of human emotion, by those memories of its dead host.

It is related to the vampires we know as the Neanderthal is related to us. It is a throwback. The blood of older demons, mingled with the blood of men. It thinks of modern vampires as corrupt. Weak.

The human it is draining of blood at this moment would agree, if he could speak. But he has drawn his last breath, and his soul's blood has fed the Turok Han.

* * *

Buffy woke ravenous. She was always this way when the Slayer powers were under strain. Her mom had used to give her grief about dieting and being too thin, had accidentally on purpose left articles on body image and anorexia lying around the house. But really it had been that sometimes Buffy couldn't eat enough to keep the Slayer system fueled. And if forced, Buffy would admit she liked how easy it was to stay in the size two jeans.

Giles had used to lecture her about nutrition. He'd always had fruit around, in the library and in the shop, just for her. Another resource she'd blown off, because it had felt like more of a burden to her. Now, she understood the reasoning behind the lectures. Now, she wanted to understand it from the inside out. For herself, for the twelve other Slayers at the Hyperion. Buffy loved Giles, and always had, but she admitted he'd been utterly clueless about how to get things across to a teenager. This was something she knew how to do. Something she was going to have to do.

Just as soon as she ate an entire horse.

She shook Giles awake. "Giles. Breakfast. Now. Hungry Slayer."

He sat up fast and looked around, then blinked and rubbed his face. He said something unintelligible to her and rolled out of bed. He vanished into the bathroom with his duffle bag in hand. Apparently Giles was a zombie in the mornings: shambling and sans brain. Moments later the water in the shower ran. Buffy smiled up at the ceiling. Giles had no clue what he was in for. No way he was showering without her. Maybe food could wait.

Later, when they were showered and Giles was most definitely fully awakened in all senses of the word, they rode the wobbling elevator down to the deserted Hyperion lobby. The lobby was shrouded and dim and smelled dusty, but the street outside was bright with morning sun.

"Going to go find a newspaper," Giles said.

He waggled his cellphone at her, then tucked it into his shirt pocket. He was out the lobby door before she could complain that he hadn't actually given her his number. Buffy shrugged, then made her way back to the private areas of the hotel, the places that had once been the domain of the staff. She followed her nose and found the kitchen right away. It was ten in the morning, and the only other person there was Xander, at the big industrial stove with a griddle and a bowl of batter.

"Morning, Buffy. Pancakes?"

Buffy gave him thumbs up. "Where's everybody else?"

"It's kind of a late-night crowd here. Fred told me the place doesn't get going until noon at best."

"Vamps and Slayers. In bed by dawn, no earlier."

"Yup, about the size of it. Hey, you look way better this morning. Giles fix you up?"

"Yeah. He'll be down here in a minute, so slap on a stack for him, too."

"So he stayed, huh?"

Buffy nodded. "Yeah. The leopard is always spotty. He's with me again."

Xander bobbled a pancake, then recovered. "With you, with you?"

Buffy held up a hand with two fingers stuck together. "In the boy-girl sense. Like this."

"In about ten minutes I am going to do the world's most-delayed spit take. Right now I am going to finish cooking breakfast."

Despite that, Xander's face under the eye-patch was calm. Xander was going to take it in stride. Angel might be more of a problem. He still liked to pretend that Buffy was waiting for him and a solution to their star-crossing problem, even though Buffy knew for an absolute fact that some vibing was going on with him and Cordelia.

She went around to Xander's side of the kitchen work surface and dug around for a coffee pot. She'd seen Gunn drinking a cup of something in the machine oil class yesterday, so there had to be beans. There, in the freezer, and there was a grinder and drip machine of the kind that coffee fanatics got into, all brushed metal with Italian names. While she ground and dripped, she made conversation with pancake-flipping-Xander about the pool. He'd fixed the filter, and drained the stagnant water, but the pool needed serious cleaning. A run to the local home and garden store, armed with a credit card lifted from Angel, had produced all the supplies he needed. It just lacked some manpower.

Girlpower, rather. This was a house of Slayers now.

Giles appeared a few minutes later with a copies of the major California papers: the LA Times, the SF Chronicle, and some little thing from Sacramento. He nodded a distracted good-morning to Xander and plunked himself down at the table. He unfolded the LA paper and sorted through until he found the crime reports. He always started there, red pen handy to mark the reports he thought Buffy should know about. Buffy stuck a cup of coffee next to him, and poured a few spoonfuls of sugar into hers. She poked at the Chronicle; Sunnydale's crater still rated front-page treatment.

Giles gulped down some coffee without even looking at it. The newspaper had his attention. "Listen here," he said to Buffy. "A series of murders in east LA. Bodies found with torn throats. The usual speculation about a serial killer, but-- "

He looked up at her. Buffy sighed, and refrained from feeling guilty. She'd been in no condition last night to help. Twelve other Slayers in the house: twelve people to share the responsibility with. Though Buffy knew, even as she formed the thought, that more responsibility would always rest on her. She was the one of them who led. First among equals.

The first stack of pancakes arrived on the table. Giles declined. Buffy snagged it without guilt and glugged on the maple syrup and butter. "What happened last night?" she said, through a mouthful of pancake. "Did we hunt?"

Xander answered. "Faith and Kennedy went out with a couple of the others. I was asleep long before they got back, so I haven't heard the sitch. They might have got it."

"They didn't," Buffy said. Giles cocked his head her, and she understood his question. "Can feel it."

"Extraordinary. Is it nearby, then?"

"No, but I can tell it's out there. LA is crawling with demons. Most of them are sorta masked off. Half-hidden. This thing isn't hidden at all. It's blaring its existence at me." Buffy met Giles's thoughtful gaze. "I bet it's driving Faith nuts."

"Faith only? Not Kennedy or the others?"

Buffy shook her head. "I think it takes a while to figure out what the spidey sense is telling you. The honing thing gives you confusing info for a long time. I mean, Angel was right next to me, and I didn't know he was a vamp. Now I can feel him two floors away."

Xander snorted, softly. He carried his plate over to them and sat. He'd made a huge stack of pancakes for himself. Buffy stole one, and he made a half-hearted attempt to stab her with his fork. Then he slid about half his stack over onto her plate. "I've seen you in this mode. And Rona, after she got sliced. Eat up."

Buffy poured more syrup onto her gooey plate. Then she stopped glared at Giles. "Shut up."

"I said nothing!" Giles said.

"You were thinking it. You were looking at me in that Watchery way."

Giles groaned. "Very well, then. All that sugar. Dreadful. You need more protein than that. Make sure you eat something solid for lunch. Happy now?"

Buffy grimaced at Giles, and he glared back, but his eyes were crinkled in the way that meant all was well. They held the look for a few seconds, then Giles blushed. He buried his face in his coffee cup.

"So, spit take time."

"Pardon?" Giles looked at Xander, then at Buffy, eyebrows raised.

"I let the cat out of the bag to Xander."

Giles spent about three seconds thinking about that, then he smiled. It was perhaps the sweetest, purest smile Buffy had seen on him since her mom had died. She knew he'd put it together, and understood her message: it was a real thing this time. Out in the open.

"So is this a Watcher-Slayer dealie or what?"

"No," said Giles, at the same time that Buffy said, "Yes."

"Totally it is," she said, bowling right over whatever it was Giles was about to say. "I have spent the last seven years of my life vibing hard whenever this guy is anywhere near me. And denying it like a pro. I am the queen of denial, which is, as you know, a river in Egypt."

Giles and Xander made near-simultaneous sounds. Giles sounded like he'd choked on a mouthful of coffee, Xander like he was trying not to laugh.

"That's the other thing about honing. Bet you didn't know this. You told me to hone, the very first day. So I honed, there in the Bronze standing next to you, and scared myself spitless. Didn't do anything about it for years. Not until I was desperate and almost drowning in Slayer-ness. It was insisting that I get back on track, complete with Watcher."

Giles wiped his mouth on his sleeve and shook his head. Xander smacked his hand on the table and made his fork skitter off onto the floor.

"All during high school? Man. Skank city. Lolita-matic!"

"Thank you, Xander. May I point out that I had no idea at the time? And that if I had--"

Buffy met Giles's consternated look. "You'd have run away as fast as your Watchery legs would carry you? Yeah. Giles, this Slayer stuff needs to learn about the modern world. This all would have been okay a thousand years ago, but now it's kinda... inconvenient." Buffy made a face. It was okay now, because she was an adult. At the age of sixteen, not so much.

"Lord," said Giles. He was scratching at the back of his head. He didn't look distressed, but instead thoughtful. Buffy'd seen the signs before: that giant brain was clicking into motion, gears spinning up ready to cross-reference. Slayers, desire for Watcher-nookie, historical instances of. Tick tick.

"Anyway. Worth bringing up, 'cause we have twelve girls here who are going to have the same uncanny sense of whose bones they're supposed to jump in a destiny-fulfilling sort of way. They might not understand what it means, though."

Now Giles did look alarmed. "Unconscious experience, you mean. Like your sense of the Turok Han. Needs experience or training to refine."

Buffy held up a finger. "Speaking of super vamps..."

"Right. Let's clear up here, then start planning for tonight."

* * *

The Watcher, if he were to be caught in a moment of unguarded honesty, would confess he has long known what the Slayer has just told him. Her blood has called to his. He dismissed it until now as romantic fantasy on his part, wishful thinking, perhaps even rationalization. He is relieved, now, to find that when his Slayer reaches out to claim him, she acts as the Powers that made her wish her to act. When she keeps him close, she strengthens herself. It is his nature not to consider his own wishes, but the Powers leaven their cruelty with kindness: they also made him as he is, and he is meant to find his peace with her and with no one else.

* * *

Xander led them to Angel's armory, or the room Angel called the armory. It was in the hotel basement, and had at one time been used as storage for uniforms. There were still a few rolling metal clothes racks pushed up against the far wall, with hangers rattling. Most of the space was cleared away for the tatami in the center. Angel still liked his tai chi, then. Buffy liked it too. Giles tended to sneer, and talk up shinkendo. In practice he'd ignored both and taught her the Council's own school of sword-fighting. And knife-fighting, which she'd always suspected he'd learned unofficially, the hard way. Some of the dagger techniques were useful with a stake.

Sure enough, Angel had his jian on a rack against the wall, in pride of place. It was sharp and in perfect condition. Xander stood, watching with rapt attention, as Buffy spun through some of her sword katas at high speed. There were times to do them slowly, when she was working on form, or learning something new, but this time she wanted to get the feel of the weapon, understand how it would respond in battle. She came to a halt and shook her head in dissatisfaction.

"Lovely weapon. Too long for you," Giles said.

"Yeah. Help me find something?" Buffy returned the sword respectfully to its place in the rack.

"Jeez, how could you tell? It looked fine to me."

"She was off-balance," Giles said, absently. His attention was on a jumble of weapons in a packing crate. "This is all axes. Not your weapon, I think."

"Nah. That Slayer axey thing is cool and all, but I like swords better. Hey. Knives over here. Combat knives."

Buffy frowned at the drawer she'd pulled open. She'd lost hers when one of the girls had borrowed it, gone out patrolling, and not come back. Not alive, anyway. She rummaged and came up with a cool-looking knife with a green camo pattern on the hasp. She unfolded it: same pattern on the blade. Giles leaned over her shoulder.

"Junk."

He took it from her, snapped it shut, and tossed it into the corner. It clattered on the floor, and Buffy reflexively winced for the sake of the blade. Giles sorted through the mess in the drawer. He muttered under his breath, something nasty and not entirely printable about the state of the knives. He'd kept his in a rack, she remembered, sorted by blade length. She'd always known where to go for each kind of tool. Angel wasn't so neat.

Giles had found a bowie knife in a black sheath. He drew it and inspected the blade carefully. He flicked it delicately against his arm and shaved a tiny patch of skin bare. He held it up, and Buffy shrugged. Whatever he thought was okay by her. He knelt and strapped the knife to her leg.

"Test the draw."

Buffy drew the knife and feinted with it. She re-sheathed it and tried the draw again. "Not bad."

"Right. Good. I don't want to load you down too much with hardware, but I do want you to have weapons easy to hand. You've always preferred a more improvisational approach, anyway."

"Improvisational. Does that mean unprepared?"

"Spontaneous. Creative. Absurd. Bloody lunatic."

He was smiling again, though, and Buffy knew he approved of her methods. Giles had once snarled at the Council that he'd taught her to _win_, not to obey. He sought the payoff strategy as single-mindedly as she. Though through different means.

He stood now in the middle of the tatami, hands on hips, glaring at the mess. "The first thing I'll do is have the new Slayers organize this room." Then he stopped and looked at her. "Pardon. That was overstepping my bounds."

"No, I think that's okay. I'll make you my official armorer in addition to my official evil grand vizier. And hey. Have Xander help?"

"Good thinking." Giles and Buffy both watched Xander on the other side of the room, already on the job sorting through chests of junk.

"You'll teach him your methods."

"Yes. And talk to him, when he's ready. About Anya." Giles sighed, then ran his hand through his hair until it stood on end. "We'll need a larger space than this for training. And more equipment."

"I think I'm ready to do some of the training myself. The basics for sure. And it's better for them to spar with me."

Giles had been cannier than she for ages, but she'd equalled him there, and now strength told. And she was going to be cannier than the new Slayers for a while. She didn't bother to specify that she'd be leading the fights, and he'd be staying home unless he had an observation mission. They'd have that argument when it came to it, and not before.

"Oh. Hey. Not too much training? Give them a few weeks to chill. It's the summer, anyway."

Giles finished with the sheath on her left leg. "Recovery period. Yes."

"Each apocalypse has an equal and opposite vacation afterward."

Giles giggled.

"Hey, Buff, found the short swords. Angel's got a stash here. These look okay?"

Xander held up something with a damascened pattern in the blade that made Giles gasp with surprise. He ran over and snatched it from Xander, then apologized hastily. Buffy watched the two men discuss the blade. Giles held it up, and pointed out features to Xander. He had Xander rest it on a finger to find the balance point. The next generation of Watchers was officially in training. At least it was in good hands, with Giles and maybe Wesley-- if they could talk him into it-- teaching them all. Starting over with new traditions, new rules. Rules invented by her, by Faith, by all of them as they figured out how things worked in the new twelve-Slayer world.

What the hey. Buffy grinned, and stretched, and felt her healed side move and bend without pain. None of that serious stuff needed to happen right now. They'd hunt the Turok Han tonight, when they were tanned, rested, and ready.

"Hey! You two! Quit geeking over the swords. We can do this stuff after dark. Let's get the Slayerettes and scrub out the pool. I wanna go swimming now."

Giles rolled his eyes, but he set the short sword down. Xander rubbed his hands against his jeans. The three of them trooped out of the armory together, in search of the Slayers and sunshine.

* * *

The Watcher and his one-eyed apprentice stand in the background, nervous seconds to their principals. It is their lot to stand aside while their warriors find battle in the night. She fights demons; he prepares her to fight. He watches her. He is witness to her deeds, and he records them so that future generations might sing her praises.

Though so many traditions have been lost, this one has not. And now they create new ones.

She leads the Slayers; he teaches her to lead. She will never fight alone again. And she will return at dawn, flushed, rumpled, triumphant, linked arm in arm with her sisters, her charges. She does so now. The Watcher and his apprentice count heads, scan for injuries, and nod to each other in satisfaction.

The Watcher is only truly at peace when his Slayer returns from the hunt, triumphant, and is folded in his arms. So many of them have been denied this comfort, or denied their need for it, and have suffered in consequence. Not so these two, whom we shall leave as we found them, embracing each other in joy.


	3. Santa Ana Wind

Giles stood barefoot, in t-shirt and jeans and resenting even that much clothing, in the lobby of the Hyperion Hotel. His nerves jumped and his skin itched. Angel spread his hands, helpless and baffled. The Hyperion had no air conditioning. It had never occurred to him to want it. Why did they want it now?

The Santa Ana winds, Wesley said, standing behind Cordelia's wheelchair, turning the summer night into dry hell, choking it with the desert dust and the ash of forest fires a hundred miles away. Cordelia snorted, and told Angel that it was because it was _hot_. She waxed long on the topic of vampires and their lack of consideration for the needs of the living, such as the need for ramp access to her room until she recovered. She was still waxing when Xander nudged Giles' arm and dragged him over to where he'd repaired the surviving ice machine, just off what had been the lobby. Giles gratefully filled the little plastic bucket Xander gave him.

The elevator doors shut on the lobby noise, and it lurched into motion. Giles rode with the ice bucket up to the top floor, where Buffy and he had set up. Set up for what, he had no idea. Nor did he need one, just yet. Days spent lounging poolside under an umbrella, watching Buffy swim while he read, nights spent in restful talk, or restless silence. Tonight it was too hot for either, and too hot to sleep. Dry, itchy.

Anything could happen.

The elevator released him onto the stifling hallway. As he stepped from it, the lights died and the hotel sighed to silence. The doors froze, half-shut behind him. And then a moment later, voices echoing from the stairwell, as its residents called to each other. Giles was enough of a Californian now to curse PG&E and its rolling outages, and still enough Watcher that the darkness of the hallway did not trouble him. He made his sure-footed way to their door, bare feet silent on the carpet.

His Slayer, his lover, was face down on the bed, stretched out diagonally across the sheets. She was wearing a tank top and a pair of his boxer shorts, and looked ridiculous and adorable. She rolled over and sat up, head cocked.

"The building just lost power. I have ice."

"Power's out all over. Heard it. There was a sort of collective groan from the street." She gestured vaguely toward the open window. The breeze coming through was hotter than the air in the room, and bone-dry.

Giles tossed the bucket to her. Buffy caught it easily. He shucked his jeans and let himself fall across the bed next to her. She was on her back, arms clasped loosely around the bucket resting on her belly. Condensation dripped down the sides. She'd rested a single ice fragment on the center of her forehead. Giles watched it melt, watched silvered droplets of water run down to her temples. He set the bucket aside on the bed. He took another piece of ice, already wet and dripping, and ran it down her nose to her lips. She opened her mouth for it, but he painted the ice across her lips, around and around. He let it rest in the groove under her nose. She twitched.

"This is called the philtrum."

"Oh?"

"The root is the Greek word for love. The ancient Greeks thought it was an erogenous zone."

She smiled at him, and the ice slid down and vanished, a damp spot on the sheets. "So does modern Buffy."

Giles let his mouth brush over her cool lips. He reached into the bucket for more ice. This piece he slid over her throat, over the pulse point of the carotid, down to the hollow at the base.

"This is the throat. It's also an erogenous zone, according to some."

Buffy closed her eyes. "Did the Greeks have a funny name for it?"

"I don't know," said Giles.

He kissed the places he'd wet with the ice, bending over her in the dim room. Salt, sweat, peaches. Far below, on the street, a car alarm howled. He reached a hand into the ice bucket and touched it to her breastbone. He traced around the edges of her neckline. Buffy shivered delicately. He pressed his lips to her damp chest, and slipped a hand under her shirt.

Anything could happen.


	4. Slow and Deep

The car alarm silenced itself at last. The Santa Ana blew hot through the open windows. The curtains lifted and fell with it. Something metallic flapped in the street below. The only sound in their hotel room was Buffy's gasp as he slid himself home. Giles let himself rest inside her for a moment, eyes closed. Savoring her, and the feeling in his chest. The sweet ache.

It had happened four times before, four times before this summer floating at the Hyperion. All hurried, uncertain. No opportunity for exploration, for taking his time with her. No chance to figure out what she liked, truly. Now, however, now-- he had all the time he wanted. He could be patient. Though often she was not.

"What's the hold up?" she said.

"You said you wanted it slow. It's a night for slow. And deep."

Slow and deep to soothe jumping nerves and itching skin. Buffy wrapped her legs around his waist and snugged him close. Her belly, flush against his, was cool and damp from the ice. Her body felt wonderful around him, warm and slick and soft. So sweet. Inexperienced in so many ways, despite her earlier partners. She was curious, however. About sex. About him. About the city around them. Curious and eager for all of life.

He lifted his head to kiss her mouth. Her eyes crinkled, and she giggled against his lips.

"Sorry. Just thinking about you and, you know."

"Who?" Giles kissed her neck again.

"Ethan."

She moved under him, rocking her hips up, and he took the hint and began to move. More slowly than she thought she wanted, withdrawing himself in a long slow tease, then holding himself motionless again until she rose to meet him.

"What brings him to mind?" Giles said, and thrust back in.

Buffy groaned, but could not be dissuaded. "Can't imagine that guy liking it slow."

He withdrew himself again. "He's like you. Impatient. Insatiable."

Buffy snorted. "Impatient, imprudent, imprisoned."

"Oh, goodness, no. He sent me a series of mocking postcards from Las Vegas a week later." They'd been entirely salacious. Giles hadn't been able to meet the eyes of his postman for weeks.

"You really slept with him. Then he turned you into a demon."

"Mmmm. Most ungrateful of him."

She'd dragged parts of the story from him in the first days they'd been here, after she'd seduced him the first time. Seduced? No. All she'd had to do was kiss him, and he'd handed himself over to her again, utterly. He did have a bad habit of giving himself over completely to lovers. Though perhaps it would work out better this time. Hope springs eternal. Difficult not to feel hopeful, here in bed with his Slayer, her restless fingers exploring his chest, stroking down his flanks, striving to tease him into going faster.

His control did not waver. He counted heartbeats, and made her wait.

"You and Ethan. Dating. Can't picture it."

Giles laughed. "Dating somehow isn't... wild enough a word for it."

"In love?"

"Love isn't the right word, either. Monomania. Mutual immolation. A year of madness. And sex. And most extraordinary highs. We tried to climb into each other's skins."

Buffy made a thoughtful sound, and mussed the hair at his temples. "Can't picture you in bed, either. Trying to imagine what you did, with him. That night."

Giles studied his Slayer. There was something in her face, something intense. Restless and unsatisfied. "You want to know what we did?"

"Yeah."

"I'll show you." Giles withdrew abruptly and knelt over her. He growled at her. "Roll over. Now."

"Oh my God," Buffy said, faintly, but she rolled onto her face.

He arranged the pillows under her so her arse was raised to him. He caressed it with the same slow patience he'd shown earlier, when he was painting her skin with ice. Her skin was ghostly pale in the dim light from the windows. He couldn't see his goal, but he could find it well enough. Brush his fingers around it and make her flinch and tremble with anticipation. Touch her everywhere but that one place, drawing all her attention there.

Giles reached to the nightstand where she had a wide jar of some thick lotion. She'd been using it on her elbows and hands. He screwed off the top and scooped out some onto the fingers of his right hand. It smelled like coconut, not too sweet. He slicked it over himself generously, not lingering. His breath had gone short at the thought of what he was about to do. She'd never been taken this way. He would be the first.

Another scoop of the cream. The coconut scent was strong, and he knew he'd be thinking of this moment every time she used it from now on. He stroked it over and around her, finally touching her.

She jumped. "Oh God."

"Be still," with the growl in his voice.

"Just, just... I'm nervous."

He leaned forward and kissed between her shoulder blades. "I'll stop if you wish," he said, softly, all the bluster gone. It was the wrong approach to use with her.

"S'okay. Please. I want to. I've always wondered--"

He let his left hand stroke up and down her back, while his right waited.

"I've done this many times. It'll be all right. It'll feel good. Relax. Like that, yes. Let yourself melt. Trust me. I know what you're feeling. Mmmm."

She hummed along with him, and he knew she was finally where he wanted her to be. He let his fingers find their goal again. She let out a breath, and he felt her settle further under his hands.

"That's right. Feel that? So many nerve endings there. So sensitive. Some people reach orgasm just from this. Yes, that's it. Let me in."

He slid his finger in, taking his time, caressing. He hadn't done this since that night with Ethan. He liked it as much as he always had. The idea that there was no part of his partner's body off-limits. No part of his own body, for that matter. The idea of the last secrets revealed. Buffy finally responded with a pleased sound.

"Do you like how it feels?"

"Yes. Never thought."

"Nobody ever touches us here. It's forbidden. Dirty. Secret." She opened further for him on those words, and began to move, pushing back just the tiniest bit onto his questing fingers. "Do you like that it's dirty?"

She hesitated, then nodded.

Giles leaned over her back, holding her close. "My dirty sweet girl. I like that you like it. I want you to feel good."

On those words he entered her, pressing himself just inside. Buffy moaned and tightened around him. Giles held himself motionless and counted heartbeats again, willing himself not to come right away, not to lose control yet.

"Okay?"

"Yeah. Go slow?"

"Ah. She wants it slow. She begs me to be slow."

Buffy laughed. Giles moved, again with infinite patience, easing himself into her. He caressed her everywhere he could reach. She'd always had exquisite control, and she trusted him. She was trembling under him, covered in sweat. So was he. He pressed on until he was all the way inside. He held himself snug against her backside and gulped in deep breaths.

"You okay?" She sounded uncertain.

"God. Yes. Trying not to come. So tight. Feels so-- You have no idea."

"What's the hold up?" she said, and he heard laughter in her voice. His heart turned over.

"Slow and deep, my love. A night for slow and deep."

And slow and deep it was, two fingers caressing her, one hand on her hip to brace himself as he moved. Giles tested his own patience to the limits, and beyond. She was close, he could feel it, hear it in her voice, in the way her breath had begun to come ragged.

She squeezed him and he thought he might die. Die, or come. Or both. He swore, and slammed into her hard. Hard and fast and deep and everything he'd wanted to hold himself back from, but he was beyond control now. Listening to her cry out beneath him, his hand on her clit and his body hard against hers, the hot dark night and no one around them, just her tight arse and his cock inside it. She was coming, shuddering underneath him and around him, and Giles clutched her hip and held himself motionless inside her and let go.

Too hot to collapse on her, though he knew his weight wouldn't trouble her. He rolled onto his back and breathed. Waited for his heart to slow, counting.

"Bloody hell. That was fantastic. Hell."

She sniffled, and guilt shot through him. Giles rolled onto his side and touched her shoulder.

"Buffy, I ought to have asked. I'm sorry. Lord. What's--" He pulled her close and kissed her wet face.

"No, I'm okay. Just too much. It felt... you know what it felt like. Intense. Different. Sort of... like you saw all of me."

"Ah." He kissed her shoulder. This he understood. "Are you worried about what I saw?"

"No. Yes. Sorry, incoherent Buffy."

Giles kissed her and nuzzled her hair. "I respect you completely. I like making you feel good. You deserve it."

She giggled through her tears and leaned up against him. Her skin was hot and sweaty. He sighed with relief. She was all right.

"Intense, yes, that's the word," he said.

"No kidding. I'll still feel it tomorrow."

"One of the pleasures. Feeling one's self well-fucked the next morning."

Buffy disengaged from him. Giles let himself slump back onto the bed. The sheets were damp beneath him. She sat up and stretched.

"So, Ethan left you well-fucked, huh?"

Giles laughed softly. "Usually the reverse. Though there were some times--"

"Tell me about them in the shower. In the nice long cool shower. In the _dark_."

But as she said the words, the lamp by the bedside clicked on, and the ceiling fan creaked into motion. Someone in the street below cheered.


	5. A Rooted Sorrow

Four times before. Before this floating summer at the Hyperion. There were times when he found it a weight upon his heart, to see her indifferent to him, and remember when she had not been. Though now, now lying quiet with her, stroking her hair as she slept, Giles was at peace.

Four times. Watcher recall is ever green.

**Tea with little cookies**

"You had something you wanted to say?"

"No... it's nothing."

Giles picked up his teacup, to give himself something to focus on. His throat had constricted with emotion too complex for words, and he needed a moment to control himself.

She wanted him to be her Watcher again.

He'd been about to crawl back to England defeated. Five years ago he'd abandoned a career and a nascent relationship to fulfill his vocation; he had decided to return with vocation and career and relationship all shattered, alone in all ways. No partner, no Slayer, no center to his life. His Slayer was still alive on a Hellmouth, still alive and effective and not in need of him at all. He must find his consolation there. Nothing he valued from his life remained to him otherwise.

Or so he'd thought when he sat down and poured tea for Buffy. In two minutes of conversation she'd overturned his world. Now, he swallowed, and attempted to get command of his face. He looked down at the cup in his hands, at the quivering surface of the tea.

Buffy's hand closed over his. She steadied him, then took the cup and set it on the tray.

"Are we okay?"

"Yes, yes, why wouldn't we be?"

"Oh, I dunno. Just, the whole last year of me ignoring you? I'm gonna screw up again, Giles. I'm going to make mistakes. But I'm not going to make that one again."

In another breath she'd straddled him and was sitting on his lap, facing him, hand on his shoulders. Giles opened his mouth, but she laid her fingers across it.

"This calls for serious hugs, Giles. Major hugs."

"All right, then."

He closed his arms around her back and pulled her to his chest. It had been so long since anyone had touched him, in this or any other way. Giles shivered, and tightened his arms for a moment, unthinking. Her breath was hot on his ear. She kissed it. He mirrored her, nuzzling into her hair. He breathed in her light floral scent, faintly sweet, and below it the scent of Buffy. Slayer. Something in her blood, that hereditary Watchers could sense. He wondered if there was something in his blood she could scent. Romantic nonsense, perhaps, both ideas. He gathered her hair behind her back and ran his fingers through it. He would never, ever be able to touch her as much as he needed to just then.

Buffy pulled back. She was smiling. Then she kissed his nose. His shoulders shook with a laugh. He returned the kiss, just a quick brush across the tip of her nose. She was smiling at him, and his chest ached to see it. A sweet ache, one that had tears threatening, though he was laughing with her, and rubbing his nose against hers.

Which one of them kissed the other first, he wasn't sure, though he would have sworn it was she and not he. He would never have dared. So Buffy kissed him, then, and again, and something tore free in his chest. He kissed her, and handed himself over to her. Let her remove his glasses and ruffle his hair. Let her kiss him, long and slow, eyes closed, hands clasped. Let her tug his shirt free from his trousers and run her hands over him. Watched her undress herself, revealing a taut and tanned body. Raised his hips and let her slide his trousers down to his knees. Let her claim him.

When she touched him he shivered.

He gripped the arm of the sofa, struggling to stay passive, to take only what she wished to give him. He wouldn't push, couldn't push. She was his Slayer again, and if she needed something he would give it to her. They'd warned him, his one-time employers had, in dark voices, that this was always a temptation between Watcher and Slayer, but something he must never allow her to do. Her instincts were not to be trusted, on this or any other issue. Fools they were to try to keep them separated; fool he was to have listened to them.

This, now, with Buffy astride him, sinking herself onto him, it was inevitable. It was right. No thoughts of bureaucracy or rules or assignments. It was the way it had been through all the long years since the birth of humans and demons. His dream: it had shown the way. Men and women, behaving as they always had. The Slayer claiming her Watcher, becoming one with him, taking from him what she needed.

And giving him what he needed: tender fingers stroked the tears away from his face, until he was smiling up at her, until he was able to give himself over to the pleasure of her body, her sweet body so warm and slick, moving over him with such power and grace. His Slayer again.

**White paint**

"What's this one?"

"Algiz. It means protection."

"You painted these?"

"Mm. And did a warding ritual, to dedicate the space."

Giles didn't often like to do magic, but the cleansing and sanctification of their training space had seemed to him to be a worthy use of the power. And the ritual had felt good to perform. He'd buzzed for hours afterward, but not with the sick dizzy-spin of a selfish working. He'd had a sense of well-being and groundedness the likes of which he hadn't felt in years. The echoes were still present in the room. An opportunity for a lesson, perhaps.

"You might," he said, in his Watcher voice, "try reaching out with your inner senses to feel the boundaries of the space. Close your eyes. Find your center."

Buffy had closed her eyes on his first words. Her face cleared. She drifted a few paces to her left and came to rest in the exact center of the room. He watched her face as she moved herself down into a light trance. They'd been working on that technique, and she was becoming comfortable with the basics. He'd teach her next to be able to use her senses without needing the trance. He was pleased with her progress. She was, as ever, the best Slayer he'd seen.

Giles closed his own eyes and let his consciousness shade out into the room. He found her there with him, a bolder and more powerful presence than he. He was aware of the places where he'd marked the walls with runes of power, of the blessing of the Powers, asked for humbly and received. Of her, stalking from corner to corner, measuring out the space he'd prepared.

His Slayer spoke his name. Giles opened his eyes. She grinned at him and leapt up at him. He caught her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. She weighed nothing.

"Thank you. It's the best present a Slayer can get from her Watcher."

"Oh? Better than a new sword?"

"This is even better. It's huger, for one thing. Plus swords don't come with pommel horses. It must have cost a bundle, Giles."

"I found a deal," he said, evasively. He resettled his arms around her, to hold her closer.

Dared he hope? She had given him no signs since that afternoon in his flat. She'd been affectionate, far more physically casual with him than she'd been before, but she had said nothing. And she was still dating Riley. Giles didn't dislike the man, but neither did he like him. He mattered to Giles only as much as he mattered to Buffy.

Giles set thoughts of Riley aside easily, and focused on Buffy's grinning face. He was content, so long as she gave him her smile this freely. Kissed him this deeply. Their partnership was better than it had ever been, tighter, warmer, with a deep mutual trust they'd shared rarely before. Buffy had been right to act. He had thought long about the Council's policy, and found himself furious over, of all things, the word "instinct". Buffy was no mute beast. She acted on intuition, perhaps, but more often on finely judged tactics. Her post-patrol debriefings had made this abundantly clear to him. His Slayer knew what she was about, and if she wanted him, she had a reason.

Giles pinned his heart to his sleeve, and kissed her back with all he was.

She pulled away with a little pout.

"I gotta run," she said to him. "Gotta do the homework thing. No time now."

She raised her eyebrows in a question, and he nodded. Message heard. There would be time later. She kissed him again and he released his grasp. She slid down to the floor and bounced. She gave him that bright, happy smile again, and sped away. Giles remained in the center of their training space, and contemplated the rune next to Algiz. Wunjo. Joy.

**Pillow talk**

"Giles?"

The voice was Buffy's and it was coming from right next to his bed. Giles sat up, instantly awake. He reached over and clicked on the bedside light. He examined her anxiously, but she seemed physically well. His heart slowed. He reached a hand out, but stopped short of touching her.

"What's the trouble? Is anyone hurt?"

"No. It's Riley. He just flew off on a helicopter. Took an Army post in South America or some place as far away from here as he could get."

Giles scrubbed at his face while parsing through this. She meant permanently. "Oh, Buffy, I'm sorry."

"I'm not sure I am. Xander said he was my once in a lifetime guy, but I think Xander was full of it. Riley is a nice guy, kinda screwed up right now, but nice. And not the guy for me."

She sounded resigned. He sat up straighter, and pulled the blankets around his waist. He patted the side of the bed. Buffy sat down next to him.

"He never, ah, seemed to be comfortable with your Slayer abilities." Giles essayed this tentatively. He didn't like to criticize Riley at the best of times, and he distrusted his own motives just now. The feeling in his chest was relief. A selfish emotion. Likely not what his Slayer needed from him.

But she nodded. "I know. It got bad when he lost his own supercharger cyborg thing. But really, it was over when I found out he was going to that suck house. I can't-- Man. Could he have picked anything more annoying and stupid to do?"

Buffy sighed. Giles watched her face carefully, searching for his cue. She was sober, a little sad, not wildly unhappy. She had many things on her mind, with her mother ill and her sister not truly her sister. Taking Riley off the list had to be a relief. Even if he was biased, he knew it to be so.

He cast about for a gesture he could make safely. "Would you like some tea? Cocoa?"

"Nah. Just a big long snuggle, if you got one of those."

Giles lifted the blanket. "Well. Get in."

"Gimme a sec." Buffy stripped herself down to camisole and knickers, tossing her clothes into a pile bedside. She slipped in next to him and moved close. "You sleep in boxers?"

Giles cleared his throat. She had to have noticed the erection inside the boxers, but perhaps she was being polite. If she wanted him, she'd let him know. "When it's warm, yes."

"Why not nude?"

"Oh. Ah. Too many unexpected visitors in the small hours."

"Point taken," she said. Then she slid her hand down his belly to the waistband. "Take 'em off. No visitors after me tonight."

Giles flushed. "Of course," he murmured. The chorus in his chest sang hallelujah as he stripped.

They lay next to each other. Giles returned her soft kisses. He held her close. If all they did was touch this way, bodies entwined, he could be content. He stroked her gently in ways he hadn't had time to touch her before. Along her flank, her thighs, a tentative touch on her breast. When she gave a little gasp, he became bolder, and lifted her camisole to run fingers over bare skin, to tease her nipple into wakefulness. He shimmied down in the bed so that he might alternate lips and fingers, rousing her further, until he had succeeded in wildly exciting himself as well. Her knee was between his thighs, and he shamelessly rubbed himself against it. He rolled onto her and cradled himself on her, nudging himself against her.

"Let me-- may I-- God, Buffy, I need you."

"Stay chill, tiger," she said. She extracted herself from him and nudged him over onto his back. Off came her camisole and her knickers; he would have liked to have removed them himself, but he was grateful they were gone. Grateful to see her sweet body bared to him at last. Tanned, slim despite the muscle, confident. He caught that scent again, and wondered once again if there was something to the rumors, if Watchers and vampires might have something in common. He reached to touch her sex, but she batted his hand aside.

"Lie back. Let me do the work for a while."

Buffy climbed over him and knelt between his thighs. Giles spread his legs to give her room to do whatever it was she wanted. She studied him. Her eyes were on his penis. Would she touch him? Giles felt himself tighten at just the thought. He wondered if he could reach orgasm from imagining how she would touch him. Her tongue flicking against the head? Licking along his shaft? Swallowing him down? He tightened further. Any touch from her would be enough.

But she did not touch him. Instead she met his gaze and grinned. "I like the way it comes out of hiding when you're excited. And it twitches when you gasp like that. It's cute."

Giles burst into startled laughter. His excitement eased. "Don't think it's ever been called cute before."

"What has it been called, if I dare ask?"

"Hmm. 'My God' is a popular name. At least that's what they all seem to--"

Buffy smacked his thigh. "You, you _guy_, you."

The rejoinder on his lips turned into a gasp when she bent without warning and licked him from root to tip. She did it again, more slowly with wandering tongue, and he flung his arms out and moaned.

"Wow. You're usually so quiet."

"Do that again and I'll--"

"See that you do."

She did, and he did. He watched himself slide into her mouth. Wide-stretched lips, hollowed cheeks, eyes closed in concentration. She took what she wanted into her mouth, and grasped the rest with a hand, and Giles screwed his eyes shut and struggled to hold out, not to pop like a schoolboy at the first taste. She was too much, too beautiful, too desirable, too intense, and he cried out his delight.

Much later, with the favor returned several times over, the room was quiet again. Giles drifted to sleep with Buffy in his arms. He hoped he would find her here when he woke, and again the next night. Perhaps now that her boyfriend was gone, now that she was truly free.

He awoke to more silence, and a sweet note on his refrigerator, signed with a line of hearts, but she herself was gone.

**Axes and swords**

"A god."

"A hellgod, to be precise."

"Giles, I am not thinking that the exact adjective in front of it matters all that much. We're talking god-sized. Like, total orders of magnitude bigger than anything we have any clue about."

The shop was long since closed up for the night, shades pulled, doors locked. The Councilmen were gone. Giles poured himself a tot of the single malt they never had gotten around to drinking, then poured a second one for Buffy. Just a taste. She sat down next to him at the tarot table and sniffed at it. Then she drank a little.

"How do you kill a god?"

Giles had no answer. The Councilmen had had no answer to that question either. "It's beyond me, Buffy. I haven't the power to kill a god. You don't, and you are so much more powerful than I."

He tasted his whisky. Peat, dust, ashes. He put it down again.

Buffy drank hers off. "So the answer is, we don't. We need information. My job is to prevent her from getting my sister. Your job is to find out why she wants her."

"You know I'll give it my all."

"You always do."

Buffy toyed with her empty glass. She seemed deep in thought. Giles stood and paced. Bookshelves to table, table to counter, back. He stopped at the wall where Buffy had thrown the sword. It was there still, embedded a foot deep into his wall. She'd done something similar with the throwing axe as well. Hit the training dummy in the gold from clear across the room, while blindfolded. He had once thought her the best Slayer he'd ever seen. He knew now that she had risen far since that moment, that she would rise still further if she wished.

There was satisfaction in this, in knowing that he had fulfilled his own destiny as fully as a Watcher might, by training the greatest Slayer in the long line of Slayers.

He tugged the sword out with a grunt. He examined the blade. Distinctive markings. A starting point for research. He returned to the table and laid it down. He sat across from her again.

The greatest Slayer. Calling her merely a Slayer was denying the reality that was Buffy, the whole human being she was. A student, daughter, a sister, a friend, a lover. Sometimes, his lover. Not merely his Slayer. She had ambitions for a degree in psychology, for a career, for a life far richer than the one circumscribed by nightly patrols and demon-fighting. He would do anything to ensure she need not give up those dreams.

But what if research or translation were not what was required? What if laying his own life down would not help? What could these poor hands do?

What would happen if the hellgod found her key? He supposed it all depended on that. And therefore it would, as always, depend on knowing one's enemies. The fate of humanity rested on those slim shoulders. And therefore it also rested on him. Giles removed his glasses and rubbed at the divots on the sides of his nose. He felt as if he hadn't slept in weeks. And if he felt that way-- When had Buffy last taken a break? He put his glasses back on and examined her professionally. Yes, she looked done in.

"It's late," he said.

Buffy gave him a half-smile, as if she could see through his clumsy maneuvers. She stretched her arms over her head and rolled her shoulders. "Hey. Giles." Her voice was tentative. "Can I come home with you tonight?"

"Buffy. Of course. Always. You are always welcome in my home."

"No, I meant--" She trailed off.

"Always welcome in that way as well. Or any way you wish," he said, quietly. His chest ached, and he was half-aroused already, at just the hint she wanted to come to his bed. Oh, Rupert, you poor fool. She doesn't love you that way, not the way you want her to.

"I just want, God, something. To feel good."

He watched her press her neck muscles with a hand and wince. "Let's go, then. I'll give you a massage. Help you relax."

"I should go home. Guard Dawn. It isn't right to, to, waste time, have fun, while things are so scary and apocalyptic and all--" Buffy waved her hands.

"Buffy, you mustn't wear yourself out. You need to let yourself live. Enjoy things. You don't have to be on guard always. Let me help."

Buffy sighed. "Hard to turn it off, you know? I'm used to killing vamps, but when it gets this serious, I just, well. Don't know how to stop."

"Even the Slayer must rest, Buffy. Come. I'll take you home with me. We'll take a bit of a break together."

He held out his hand. She stood, slowly, and took it, and he led her out, and took her to his bed, and gave her surcease, if only for one night.

**Countertop**

Giles set the kettle on the stove and reached up to the cabinet for the tea. He knew where everything was, now, where Joyce had kept everything from dried pasta to loose tea. He'd tried moving something once, to a more convenient location, but Buffy had silently returned it to its original place. He understood what the trouble was. He'd had similar issues when his father had died: his filing system, no matter how outmoded, had to be preserved. Giles had felt for years that he might appear at any moment to observe the innovations and tut.

So the tea remained up and in the back, and the sugared cereal in pride of place, and Giles quietly worked around it. Grief took strange paths in the human heart, and might wander its maze for years before its course was done. And Buffy had been allowed so little time to grieve undisturbed.

He leaned back against the counter and watched her pace. Round and round the kitchen, circling the island.

"Giles, I'm scared. It's been kinda grim, all this year. Been grim before, back when we had no clue what the Mayor was up to. But this. This is scaring me like I've never been scared."

He said nothing. Buffy continued to move. The Slayer paces; the Watcher watches. He could see the stress in her body, in the way she held her shoulders. Her face. The circles under her eyes.

"I've gone from a family to just her in five years. I used to have a mom and a dad and a sister. Now I have just her. I can't lose her. But I don't know how."

"Buffy," he said, and nothing further. She knew all he knew, and she knew that everything he had was dedicated to this search for information.

"Glory, social services, everything. It's just too much. I can't deal with any more."

"Buffy, I'll offer again. Let me move in. You needn't cope with Dawn on your own. It's a difficult time for both of you."

"No, Giles, I can't-- I can't let this ruin your life, too."

He opened his mouth to protest. Didn't she realize this was his life? Then he closed it again. The message was clear, though she seemed unaware of what she'd said. He'd failed. She was reduced. No college degree, no career. A glorious warrior, nothing more. An overburdened single parent to a sister who was, perhaps, not truly her sister. Giles wondered, not for the first time, what Dawn's parentage was. But it could not be said aloud.

"Buffy," he said. "Please. Let me help. I'm here to help you."

The kettle went. He turned off the gas and poured water. Fussing with the tea things distracted him from disloyal thoughts. Trust Buffy. Trust her decisions, which might be instinct but were more likely intuition. Sound intuition from a trained tactical mind. Trust her, though something inside Giles screamed that things were going wrong, there was something he'd missed. Some connection he'd failed to make.

He poured two mugs and sweetened hers the way she liked. Milk in both. A single spoon to set both spinning, then to the sink to wash it clean immediately. No tray with service and little cookies tonight. Just a quiet cup, standing in the kitchen. He drank, and tried not to fix his gaze on failure, but instead look at whatever it was Buffy was looking away from.

His jaw was tight. His dentist had told him he was grinding his teeth in his sleep.

"Giles. Make love to me."

"Now? We--"

"Now. I have a hunch. Don't ask. Just a hunch. We aren't going to get any more chances. Now. Or never."

Giles was frozen in place for a moment, thinking. As propositions went, blunt, heartbreaking, utterly grim. But his body had heard what it wanted, though his heart had not. And he suspected it never would. Poor fool Rupert.

Poor fool Rupert took off his glasses and set aside his tea and drew a deep breath and stepped over to her. And crushed her against his chest and took her mouth. She made a sound of satisfaction.

Giles lifted her to the counter top and sat her down. She weighed less than he remembered. He bunched up her skirt around her waist. His hands found her sex. He caressed her with his thumbs. She spread her thighs for him and threw her head back and let him be rough. He removed her knickers and stuffed them into his trouser pocket. He unzipped himself and entered her without preliminaries. She was ready, he was ready, and they had little time. He moved hard, fast. She slipped a hand down between them to touch herself, and he urged her on, begged her to come for him. Told her he'd come in an instant if she were to come around him. He said things he'd never said to her before, about sex, her body, how she felt around him, what he wanted to do, how he would make her feel. How she would shake for him.

And she did, over and over, to his immense and selfish gratification. Ripper knew how to please, men and women both. She'd walk away satisfied, if she could walk after this. Giles thrust, and felt her shudder again, and heard her cry his name. Rupert.

His own orgasm caught him by surprise. It was hard and swift and merciless. His knees failed him, and he would have fallen, but she caught him and held him up effortlessly, held him tight against her, inside her, while the aftershocks eased and his breathing slowed. Her grip on him was painfully tight, but he didn't mind. He held her just as desperately.

I love you, he thought, but did not say. I don't want you to sacrifice yourself for her. I'll never love Dawn as much as I love you.


End file.
